


I Love You So Much These Days

by shogas



Category: Gorillaz
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23037280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shogas/pseuds/shogas
Summary: It’s been 10 years since Plastic Beach’s release and 12 since it’s production. Everyone has chosen to forget their tragic time on the pink hellscape... right?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	I Love You So Much These Days

March 3rd, 11am. Everyone was quite sluggish around this time, if conscious at all. Noodle and Russel had been up for maybe an hour, thirty minutes at best, sitting in the kitchen reading news articles or scrolling twitter with a bowl of cereal and morning coffee. Ace was the next to come down stairs. Though Murdoc had come back to the band, they’d allowed Ace to bum around and do chores and other tedious work the band just didn’t want to do themselves. “Morning, Ace,” Noodle greeted without looking up from her phone. He gave a soft grunt back as he opened the bare fridge, looking for something that appealed to him in the slightest. As he reached for the styrofoam box of miscellaneous leftovers in the back of the fridge, there was a loud rhythmic knock at the door. 

“Ace, you wanna—“ Russel started before hearing the fridge slam shut and a groan coming from the bassist. “YEAH, yeah, I’m gettin’ it...” Ace pouted, making his way to the front door, where the knocking continued. “I’M COMIN’, chill on the door,” he griped, before opening the front to reveal their early morning visitor. 

He stared for a moment, both to adjust his eyes to the outside light and to make sure he was seeing this right. “I came to see Murdoc. May I come in?” The guest asked, rather monotone. He didn’t really give it a thought, still trying to get a grasp on their guest. “Yeah, uhh... Make yaself at home, I’ll go grab Mudz,” Ace replied, shutting the door as she let herself past him. She sat on the couch, not minding the multiple stains, crumbs, cigarette butts and wrappers littered over it. 

“Hey, who was at the door, Ace?” Noodle asked, coming around the corner to take a peak at who was now sat on the couch. Seeing no sign of Ace, she took a step further into the room, only having sight of the back of the woman’s head. “Morning! Don’t want to be rude, but if you’re a “friend” of 2D or Murdoc, they probably won’t be up for a while,” she chuckled, sitting herself on the arm of the couch before nearly toppling off at the sight of the woman on the couch.

“I’m aware of their sleep patterns... Even after 10 years, I still have their schedules downloaded in my memory bank,” her monotone voice carried as she turned her head. Cyborg Noodle. The band hadn’t really thought anything about her after their escape from the Plastic Beach incident, and now here she was 10 years later, sitting on their disgusting, worn couch. Noodle gave her cyborg counterpart a dark glare, stating, “I think you need to leave.” Cyborg shook her head, hands lying politely in her lap. “I can’t leave until I finish my business here. It’s important.”

Upstairs, yelling and objects falling to the floor could be heard, followed by Ace and 2D leading down the stairs. “He’s uhh... Yeah, he might be a minute,” Ace said, readjusting his hair into a less sloppy ponytail. Cyborg only nodded, otherwise staying still on the couch. 

By now everyone was sat awkwardly in the living room on whatever furniture they could find to sit on. Just staring their guest down. To be fair, she did look quite different than when they’d last seen her; though she was still distinguishable as Cyborg Noodle. The bullet hole she received during the Stylo video was now covered and seemingly repaired with a small tile of metal over top of it. Her right eye was completely blacked out and looked to be offline, assumingely blind. There were signs of decay as bits of her synthetic face skin had rubbed off completely, showing the metal skeleton underneath. Her hair was a mess, bangs much shorter now, coming just above her eyebrows, the rest looked just plain damaged from years of not being taken care of. The rest of her body was cloaked by a pair of black jeans, a black and white stripped shirt and a black jean jacket with hand made patches as well as the pin from her old beret. 

As Murdoc finally came down the stairs, he looked over everyone’s face and the back of his guest’s head. “Alright, tell me what in the bloody hell you lot got me up this early for. Don’t tell me another bird needin’ money for—“ and before he could finish his sentence, she turned to look at him, only the left side of her face visible to him. He muttered a “Christ’s sake” under his breath, face showing genuine shock. For a moment he just stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking at her, taking everything in before scrambling into the room to take a closer look at her after all these years. “Sweet Satan, the years truly did a number on you, eh, love?” His voice was somewhat gentle when he took her face in his hands, looking over all the damage that had been done. 

“No thanks to you,” her words had spite in them and bit into him like venom, though he hid the hurt behind a smirk. “So, you can speak after all, eh?” Murdoc sounded amused as he continued looking her over. She seemed to take offense to his remark, as her eyebrow’s furrowed before she replied, “Yes, I can NOW. After you’d abandoned me on that pink hell, I had to do everything for myself. I updated myself regularly, I repaired myself using scraps of this and that and what washed to shore. After a while, the makeshift repairs weren’t enough and I had to resort to making my way to the mainland to ask someone for assistance. I ended up getting shipwrecked, though it was my own fault for trying to make it anywhere on a raft. I ended up washing to shore in California where an old woman took me in and had her son fix me to the best of his ability, gave me new eyes, fixed my voice and memory files...” She trailed off, looking at her hand in a reminiscent sort of way before looking back up to her father with a stern glare. “The two of them housed me for three years, and in that time I learned much about human life. About real people, about real families... I realized a lot in that time. I realized that you, Murdoc, are poisonous.” 

The others stared between Murdoc and Cyborg, waiting for him to throw a fit, try to kick her out, something of the sort. Instead he ended up laughing; not unexpected in the least. “Three years? And they let you end up looking like THIS? Must’ve been a rubbish family, I’d never let you get this awful!” He seemed to have disregarded her previous statement. “Don’t speak ill of them. I left their care five years ago and ended up like this in that time. I came here to give you all my final words before my perpetual shut down,” Cyborg responded, leaning forward, looking right into Murdoc’s eyes. 

Though the rest of the house was still there, it felt like it was just the father-daughter duo in their own bubble at that moment, forgetting anyone else was present. Shut down? The more he thought about it, the more memory of her design came back to him. At the time, he’d been having the strangest foreboding dreams about the end of the world and how he’d be the last person on Earth. It seemed like it’d be lonely, so with that in mind, he built his robotic daughter with an upgrade plan, to where after 10 years of self sufficient updates, she would either have to be manually updated and repaired, or she would have a permanent shut down. “...Has it really been that long...?” He asked, voice laced with sadness. He never thought he’d see the day she’d ‘die’, especially considering the end of the world never came. If anything, back then he saw himself dying of dehydration, starvation or by his own hand before seeing Cyborg Noodle go. “Look, I know I haven’t been the greatest to you, but what do you say to me fixing you up, eh? Could start a band of your own or something, live a bit more, yeah??” 

She shook her head at his offer. “I’ve had too much damage in these past five years, I tried to repair myself to no avail. Besides, you’ve had your chance to do anything with me, you chose to leave me alone on Plastic Beach. I want nothing from you now but to hear my final words to you,” Cyborg looked away, taking an unneeded, but dramatic breath before she sat back against the couch, looking up at Murdoc from where he sat on the coffee table. “Father,” she began, making his heart twist and skip in his chest, “For the short time I knew you, I gathered information on you and patterned how you acted, thinking everything you did was right. Maybe that was just how you programmed me. But since I’ve been gifted the chance to experience a real family and the chance to meet and care for real people, it made me realize that you are awful. You hurt people to make yourself feel powerful. You hide your hurt with substances and anger. There is nothing good about you and your bandmates are the ones who have to take the fall for what you lack as a person.” 

Murdoc sat in silence for a moment before waving her off with a sneer. “Bah, what do you know!! You lived with me for less than two years, how could you possibly think you know anything about me!!?” Briskly, Cyborg came to her feet in front of him, jamming a finger into his chest. “How could I NOT know about you?! You publicly talk about yourself on every bit of social media you can get your hands on!! You’ve got interviews and articles about yourself EVERYWHERE!! You think I wouldn’t ingest every little bit of media I could get just to know something about the father that ABANDONED ME!!?” As if it weren’t silent before, her words created a cold and soundless atmosphere. Murdoc only looked into her mismatched eyes, trying to find the words to say. For god’s sake, she was just like him. Rather than chasing the mother that ran out on him, she chased the father that forgot her existence entirely. 

He couldn’t find the words for a rebuttal, so she continued, “All you’ve done is hurt anyone you can get your claws into because that’s what your father did to you... You’re no better than him. Murdoc, you do nothing but pity yourself and hide it behind your huge god complex... You don’t give a damn about anyone but yourself... And I... I fucking hate you.” Her finger left his chest as she backed off, giving him a good once over. 

As he found the nerve to stand and say something back, the rage that had filled her face softened, her one good eye now going white, then black as her body collapsed to the floor. Needless to say, the loud noise of her limp, robotic body clattering to the ground made everyone jump. All except her father, who just stared down at the girl. Noodle covered her mouth with her hand, 2D had his hand covering his cold sweat coated forehead in disbelief, Ace and Russel just looked on with their jaw’s dropped. “Murdoc,” 2D began, putting a hand on the man’s shoulder before getting shoved off. “For fuck’s sake, could you lot do something useful for once? Find me a box or something to put this damn thing in. Don’t just sit their with your mouthes wide open, GO!!” He shouted, watching the four hurry out to find something for the poor girl’s body. 

Once he was sure they were gone, Murdoc knelt down to touch the skeleton through her damaged face. It had gotten cold so fast, as if she’d been shut down for ages. Aside from her damages and cut hair, she looked exactly the same as she did all those years ago; like a teenage girl. It didn’t take long for him to let out a quiet sob for her as he thought of how much her words stung and how he could have done so much more for her. “I love you,” he whispered with his forehead pressed to hers. And for the first time, he truly meant it. 

**Author's Note:**

> this started out better than it ended plz dont come for me i know it’s kinda tacky but i rly do be tryin tho 🥺


End file.
